According to market researcher NPD, sales of so-called prestige fragrances — typically the high-end, designer scents sold by department stores — fell 10 percent in 2009 from the prior year. This was a sharp acceleration of the 6 percent decline from 2007 to 2008, and a 1 percent decline from 2006 to 2007.
With a bad situation turning worse, the fragrance manufacturers — who are often secretive, and most certainly fiercely competitive — are banding together to do a national campaign to encourage men and women who use perfumes and other scented products, to do so more often.
— From Can One Ad Change Everything for the Fragrance Industry? at CNBC. The article discusses the Fragrance Foundation's new One Drop campaign; if you haven't yet seen the website, check out One Mighty Drop.
Dolce and Gabbana and a couple of other designers were doing something good at Macy’s. You could buy The One or The One Rose in a big bottle and you the other one in a smaller 30 ml for free. Brand new in the boxes and everything. I think they should do something like that.
Dolce and Gabbana did, what 7 scents last year? Of course the industry is going down the tubes! 7 scents?!
There are too many fragrances, there is no doubt about that. But the industry can’t seem to stop itself, so instead, we get a new ad campaign
it does not stop, no one wants to cut their share of profit. It is all about profit, and as long as it is about the profit, the profit will drop (in the present economy at least) and I think it is exactly what was needed to send the message that it is not ok to sell for the sake of selling…something is missing from the chain
Were they testers or marked GWP? Givenchy gives out free full sized testers with purchase when the sales figures are abysmal.
If anything, this may bring a slow halt to the inundation of new launches.
However, when sales figures plummet, stores and fragrance companies’ first response is to cut back on payroll, leaving stores more vulnerable to theft and decreased sales (less manpower, fewer sales). Our local Macy’s has become a joke – no longer are thieves content with stealing testers,but after 7 pm, security is gone and there’s only 1 person staffing the entire fragrance department. Now they steal multiple bottles off the shelves and stroll out. The theft is so rampant we joke about customers coming in with milk crates to take what they want. Macy’s ‘solution’ was to install a bank-style velvet rope around the department, but that just advertised their lack of staff and security. Coty reps refused to work there during evening hours after security left. Can’t say I blame them.
Everyone said there would be fewer launches in 2009, but I don’t see any evidence of it, and so far, 2010 looks to be just as bad. Whatever drop off there’s been in mainstream, the explosion in niche has made up for it!
Re: Givenchy
they do? where?
in Austria, they don’t offer that many products anymore (no skincare of makeup, just a few fragrances) so they opted for the ‘buy over 70 Euros worth of Givenchy products and get a free tote’-way.
don’t know if they’re successful that way, there’s just not that many Givenchy products available anymore…
Maybe it’s just me but their website was a bit vague. Hard to tell what point they’re trying to make.
That said, as someone who’s just graduated from being a signature scent woman to a wanna be perfumista, I’m all for smaller bottles. There are a number of scents I’ve sniffed that I’d like to own in small doses but wouldn’t wear often enough to justify a 50 or 100 ml purchase.
The website is geared towards women who do wear perfume, but not all that often. Whether it will reach those women, or convert them, is hard to say…but from my perspective, yeah, hard to see the point. I really do believe the absolute best thing the fragrance industry could do to improve the state of things is to go back, somehow, to no more than 500 new releases a year. Ain’t gonna happen though.
Yes – smaller bottles would be awesome. I’d love to have a shelf full of cute little 15ml bottles – and I’d buy a lot more FBs that way instead of decants and splits.
Yep, me too!
Hello,
This is my first post but I been lurking the blog for a very long time.
Well perfumes sales not doing so good in where I reside (Egypt) mainly because they are expensive here and unlike US we don’t get free samples or free 30ml or 15ml over our purchases so there isn’t really any kind of encouragement by all retailers. But it’s fair enough in a country that only care about mainstream latest fruity over advertised perfumes. I usually stock up during sales, unless a bottle whispers to me
Hi and welcome! I don’t get any free 30 or 15 ml bottles in stores either, so don’t think that’s very common.
I am Not Impressed with the website. I love perfume and I love reading about perfume, and there was nothing in the site that tempted me to read. In fact, forget tempted – there was almost nothing in the site _to_ read.
The general site design seems very 1990s, focused on gimmicks at the expense of logical organization and navigation. The “design your own bottle” struck me as something that you’d put on a children’s site, as part of a game designed to teach children their letters or numbers.
I _want_ their campaign to work. I want more perfume freaks, and a big enough market to support more niche perfumes. But. But. What _were_ they thinking? How can the companies who produce all those gorgeous, arresting perfume ads make such a bad marketing website?
Rant. Gnash. Froth.
Yes, ‘move along, nothing to see here’, as Robin would say. But it’s probably not designed for perfumistas. I guess it’s trying to tempt the casual user of fragrance to explore a bit more and try some new things. Basenotes and Fragrantica offer a lot more for us. As does NST of course!
There is surprisingly little to read, it’s true, and what’s there is no more detailed than what you’d find in a magazine. Oh well.
buy a new 100ml perfume per month, that’s what they’d want us to do.
since i’m basically never paying full retail anymore, i don’t really care lol.
Nor do I
Robin,
I have an impression that they won’t slow down the rythm of launches, because maybe this would shows that their strategies were wrong and I have an impression that this is an industry that refuses to demonstrate that it was wrong.
There soo many launches, and they seems to be very similar with other launches, that with the high prices the costumer doesn’t feel moved to buy more. And we also have the costumers that loved an specific fragrance, discovered that it was reformulated and then can’t find nothing in the market to try replacing it.
What’s odd is that here in Brazil it looks that this sector wasn’t so affected with the crisis. But we still pay absurd prices on fragrances here, in the way that a Carolina Herrera Fragrance in general cost almost the price of a bell jar of serge lutens here.
I think it’s a Catch 22. They’ve basically “taught” consumers to value newness. If one company stops producing so much and other companies don’t, the company that stopped loses out. And since a widescale agreement between firms to slow down is not likely, I don’t think we’re going to see any changes.
I know sales are down, but same here: I don’t see that the number of releases has been affected at all.